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Comment by rusty__ | Hacker News Reader

You know, as much as I admire the drive of people to write tools and hack together scripts to brute force and essentially break the game - I also hate that the world is like this sometimes. Cant we just have a fun game that people can while away a few minutes a day being human and imperfect for once? Do we have to find the optimal solution to everything... all the time?

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You're asking whether we can have a challenge where no one on earth is interested in studying it and I think the answer is "no."

If you don't want spoilers, don't look them up? It's like complaining that the existence of archeology as a field takes the romanticism out of dinosaur stories.

I don't think I'm asking that? I guess I'm asking, where is the fun in reducing a game that takes some brain power to a game of solving one 5-letter anagram. Your analogy is a fair one though. I don't begrudge people using their talents to analyse and dig deep in to a game (like chess or go), I think it's just a bit sad that every single one of these simple games is effectively broken just days or hours after taking hold with 20 lines of code (see also 2048).

> every single one of these simple games is effectively broken

Can you elaborate on how the game is broken? How does someone else writing a solver affect your own enjoyment of the game? Wordle isn’t competitive, right, so is the problem just knowing that a robot can do it demotivates you from trying?

This might be an interesting question about human behavior and our motivations that we should think about as we move into the AI age, because no, there will never be another popular game that escapes AI players. Not only are we going to make AI for every playable game, we are building AI for every human activity.

FWIW, I’ve written Sudoku and Boggle solvers, and still love to play those games manually. In fact writing the solvers I think increased my own enjoyment of them, it gives a certain perspective on the difficulty of the game, and of how much humans do to simplify our effort compared to a computer.

I guess it's broken because it's been reduced from a game of progressive deduction to solving 1 5 letter anagram - not the original intent of the game.

I completely agree that it's a fascinating wider question I think I'm alluding to here - living in a world where AI/computer brute force can achieve everything is a going to be a strange place to live in in 50-100 years time. Do we want to make humans redundant in this way - sure this is just a silly game, but, as COVID has shown us the last couple of years, supply chains, logistics etc are all minutely tuned and determined by computers with little human involvement - is that a world we all want to live in, I'm not so sure.

But I mean why does someone else reducing the game to an algorithm hurt your personal experience with the game? If you don’t use AI to play the game, and if the game isn’t competitive, why does it make you sad when someone else does?

BTW I’m not trying to debate or contradict you, your opinion is valid and I’m hoping to dig into that wider question a little by getting more specific about your personal experience and emotions, to uncover in more detail what it is about AI that is bumming you out. I’m curious to hear about what the automation is taking away from you from your perspective. Does the Wordle anagram solver here feel worse to you or similar to older examples like the Big Blue chess AI? And how do computers in general fit in, as well as mechanical automation like cars & tractors, etc?

Are there certain kinds of AI automation you see value in, any things that leave humans with less manual labor and more free time? I’m kind of excited for driving AI, for example, if we can make it safe and reliable enough. It will definitely upset certain economies, but maybe fewer accidents and traffic jams and more free time during travel are redeeming values?

Agreed, but in this case I don't see it as optimal. In the last example he's found 4 of the 5 letters after 2 guesses. Using 3 more guesses at that point seems like a bad idea. At some point finding words that shuffle known letters around to unscramble them might be better. There are also words like ROBOT that have duplicate letters - that was the wordle of the day recently.

For a nice do-it-by-hand puzzle try this:

Fill a 4x4 grid with whole numbers less than 30, such that all rows have the same product (of all 4 numbers) and all columns have the same sum (of all 4 numbers). This can be done by hand with some paper - I kept notes in notepad to do it.

Yes, the word optimal should be understood very narrowly here.

Part of the fun (and in game-nerdery terms, the “optimality”) is getting there before 6 guesses, which would require some adaptive strategy.

I agree. The one thing I wish there was a program that just gave me the list of remaining possible words. Some start words have an S or T in them which doesn't really help since 80% of the word list has an S or T. I use more obscure words. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I got today's on the 2nd guess by thinking "what is a weird word" with only knowing one letter and I got it. These days are way more fun than always getting it on turn 4.

Finding the best way to beat a fun game is a fun game, as well.

The game itself has limited novelty, with the majority of people getting the solution in 3 or 4 guesses through normal fitting. It's entirely natural that people try to find new ways to challenge themselves with it.

The group of people playing a game, and group of people analyzing the same game for optimal solutions are both doing the it for fun. In what way does either group spoil the fun for the other?

I don't see the harm in someone spending a few hours nerding out on a strategy for a solitaire game. It's an interesting read for some, and shouldn't diminish your enjoyment.

You (and your friends) don't have to use a script. Every other game has been solved by programs: tick-tac-toe, sudoku, chess, go, ...

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